Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, confidence and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.

Take a
look at the stats for this tweet. Nearly 2 years after Ms Marxxx sent
this tweet, it's still racking up favourites and retweets. At the
time of writing, this tweet has 53 retweets and 171 favourites.

My first
question: How are people finding this tweet? It isn't just an old
tweet; it's a reply. It wouldn't show up in someone's tweet feed
unless they were following both me and Ms Marxxx. And even then, it
would only have shown up at the time of tweeting in 2012.

My
second question: Why are so many people favouriting it? Granted,
there's a picture there, but isn't the internet awash with pictures-
not to mention videos- with this kind of content?

My
third: Are these accounts bots? Even if so, why are they bots that
scour old replies and favourite them? What purpose would that serve?
Are they searching for pictures?

And
fourth: Is it to do with her large-for-a-pornstar 115K follower
count?

It's
something that has just made me curious over the last few years. I
asked a few of the people who recently favourited it why they did so,
but got no response. I also asked Ms Marxxx herself. I got a “lol”.
The internet doesn't seem to shed light on the reasons for its
popularity. Can you?

Tuesday, 22 July 2014

I just
happened to catch Witness, the BBC News programme
investigating past events from the perspective of those who were
there. Today's show featured an aging woman who escaped the Nazi
death camps because she was too young. It is- as many WWII survivor
stories are- a harrowing account of ethnic cleansing from a war that
genuinely shaped today's world.

It got
me thinking about a conversation I had with someone in early 2008-
something I've been chewing over for years. I used to be mates with
PK- we'd go for drinks at the weekend in the local dodgy bars, and
I'd find myself wondering why I was there, considering I didn't like
the area and I didn't particularly like him either. An employment
support mentor had not long ago dropped the bombshell that I'd been
living with an inaccurate diagnosis of dyslexia for 9 years, and that
the problem I had been dealing with was a short-term memory issue. I
quickly realised why I'd been struggling for so long- with academia,
with employment, with day-to-day tasks like remembering where I
parked the car- and I was still trying to figure out what I should do
with my life, how I should behave, and what I wanted. I was pretty
directionless. So if someone invited me out for a drink, I'd go
without thinking do I actually want to do this?

The
first time I went out with PK we couldn't get into Envy because the doorman recognised him
and were sure they'd already barred him. He claimed not to know what
that was about. I was suspicious, and made a mental note that he
could be a bit of a toerag.

But
I forgot.

I
saw him cheat on numerous girlfriends, and he frequently got caught
and people got angry with him. I made a mental note not to get
typecast like him and to encourage him to go somewhere better than
Oldham.

But
I forgot.

I
lent him money which he didn't pay back, despite coming out with me
after that and getting drunk. I realised this was a pisstake, and I
needed to confront him.

I
wasn't- and still aren't- the confrontational type, though. And I
forgot.

I
eventually distanced myself from him. I got an apology not long after
that- probably brought on by some hard-done-to girlfriend who was
trying to set him right, and we occasionally went out for drinks in
the same shit bars. I blocked him after one of his psycho exes was
mithering me on Facebook to get him to unblock her. Instead of doing
what she wanted, I blocked her too. And all of his mates. And all of
her mates. My life has been so much more peaceful since that Facebook
clearout.

But
there was one other conversation that I'd had with PK, an incident
that slipped my mind for many years, and the Witness programme
brought back that memory. We were staggering back from Oldham at 3AM
one Sunday morning when we started talking about politics and war,
for some reason.

PK
said, “If you think about it, Hitler had the right idea.”

I
just stared at him.

“No,
listen. Right. Hitler's idea was that we should all be the same. He
wanted everyone to have blonde hair, blue eyes and the same thoughts.
That way there'd be no wars.”

Another
pause.

“Aw,
don't be looking at me like that.”

I
was too busy computing how retarded that statement was to offer any
argument to it. I didn't tell him that the war involved a lot of
politics, which differs to religion or physical appearance, and
that-essentially- without these particular differences, we'd just
find something else to fight over, like land or resources. Like we
are doing anyway.

When
we got to the turnoff for his road, we just went our separate ways
without a fallout- no argument, no discussion.

And
guess what? I went home, fell asleep and forgot about it for YEARS. I
carried on being friends despite further problems. People were
understandably disappointed in me just for being around him. So why
was I entertaining this mug?

It's
frequently easy for me to forget things if they're problematic- a
fallout means difficult conversations, and it means disappointing
mutual friends and having to explain myself to people I do like over
issues involving people I don't. I don't know whether I suppress
these memories or whether they just fade to the back of my mind until
I remember them, by which time it's too late to just bring up and
start arguing about. Therein lies the problem. When you have a
disagreement, you need to be able to back up your perspective with
examples. You need to be able to say, “this is what I'm not happy
with.” When you can't remember the solid examples, the temptation
is to back down from the argument in case you fall short and look
like an idiot. Having memory difficulties makes you constantly doubt
yourself. So what do you do about it?

You
need to make a record. Make details of what happened. Download the
Colornotes app from the Play Store on your phone. Using this you can
tap in whatever text you want, and as far as anyone around you knows,
you'll be sending a text. If you remember anything else later, add it
to the note. (If needs be, use the “checklist” option to keep all
related incidents on one page.)

Having
done that, you need to make the decision: will you speak to them
about it? If so, you will need to back up your argument with examples
of what it is you're not happy about. The chances are you won't be
able to reel them all of one after the other- you'll be cut off, the
subject will change, you'll go off on a tangent and you won't get to
say what you want to. Not to mention, you'll forget most of it
without the prompts in front of you. So the challenge will be to
steer the conversation back to the points you want to raise. If needs
be, be completely upfront about your need to make notes about their
behaviour. If you're discussing it face-to-face, you'll have to as
they'll see the notes on the phone.

A
Facebook conversation can be helpful in this way- everything you
write between each other stays on the screen so you can always break
and come back, or review the conversation to avoid repeating
yourself. You can have your notes in front of you as you discuss the
situation.

Of
course, you can always just tell them you're busy and distance
yourself that way. If you're not comfortable with confrontations,
this could be the easiest option. But the important thing is that you
make the records for yourself, and then act on them. Cut out negative
people and do not concern yourself with what mutual friends think.
Don't worry about further fall-outs. Fall-outs are normal, whether you
have memory difficulties or not.

Saturday, 19 July 2014

This is
harder than it sounds. For brunch yesterday morning I did just that-
I ate a whole lettuce. Why? Because there is a rumour that it takes
more joules of energy to eat lettuce than the calories that it
contains. It takes one joule of energy to burn one calorie of fat, so
in theory you should be able to lose weight by eating more lettuce.
Right?

Not
exactly, it seems. I had the bright (read: ridiculous) idea of
attempting to eat ten heads of lettuce in order to lose weight. So,
how did it work?

First,
it took a LOT longer than I'd expected to eat. Eating lettuce is a
much slower process than I'd imagined. Second, lettuce loses its
non-taste after a few mouthfuls and turns quite sour. Third, it
doesn't do your stomach much good. Fourth, after thirty minutes of
chewing it starts to give you jaw-ache.

It took
five minutes to eat the first third of the lettuce, but a further
forty to get to the end of said head.

It took
thirty-nine minutes for me to realise I'd forgotten something before
I ate it.

It
turns out that lettuce is a stomach expander,
which will make me hungrier. And may give me rickets. Fail.

In
short, it was a terrible idea. But hey, I'm full of them. At least I
got a healthy dose of vitamin A and Betacarotine (which is a form of vit
A itself). Best to eat a little lettuce often, along with a bit of
super-food greenery like spinach and watercress.

Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Gawker
is one of the funniest, most sarcastic and irreverent news websites
on the net, offering
“Gossip from Manhattan
and the Beltway to Hollywood and the Valley”. But its output ranges
much wider than that. From a “hero pig” scaring residents in Maine to
Weird Al Yankovic's parody of Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, the
Manhattan-based blog scours out every outrageous, hilariously-banal
or damning news article / video / tweet and offers their own edgy
slant on it. At feedback group Writers Connect
I suggested we use the site for a homework project: create a 500-word
(no more) flash fiction piece inspired by a story on the site. Here's
what I devised.

“This
might be the last time you hear from me,” he said into the
phone.

I
patted the air in front of me, silencing the guy at the front of the
queue mid-order. People don't say that unless they mean it.

I
glanced over the young guy's shoulder, the bloke in the flat-peaked
baseball cap, to the quietening restaurant. A gasp from a mother in
the far corner caused further head-turns. She covered her daughter's
eyes.

It
wasn't quite twelve yet, and we were still due the surge of junk-food
addicts. I could still see to the door from behind the counter. At
the back of the small queue, dressed in brilliant whites, topped off
with one of those fisherman hats that kids wore to raves in the
nineties- the type that, today, only a black man could pull off- an
imposing figure swaggered.

Like
an unwitting Moses, he stepped forward to the till, parting the sea
of would-be diners, regulars who were wary when he approached,
terrified once he'd passed.

With
a hand on the counter he licked his lips, seemingly trying to focus.
“I know it's been hard. But I guess I just wanted to, uh, to tell
you I love you very much,” he said, and pointed at the poster
showing this week's meal offer. “I'll go for that.” He cleared
his throat. “Please.”

It
took me a moment to realise which part of that dialogue was directed
at me. “Eat in or take out?” His meal came with a plastic toy,
and I wondered whether he ordered it for that reason.

“Um.”
He licked his lips. “Probably best to take out.”

Flat-peaked-cap-guy
almost held out a hand to steady him. “Are you okay, mate?”

“Shit,”
the man said, “I got a cool demeanor.”

It
was only after I took his money and slammed it into the till that I
noticed the blood on my hands. I thought of my hygene certificate
blu-tac'd to the office wall upstairs.

I
gave him his stained change and his food, smearing the folded lip of
the paper bag reddy-brown.

In
the distance, a siren wailed.

He
turned and lurched back to the door like Frankenstein's monster.
That's when I saw the black handle of the kitchen knife jutting out
from between his shoulder blades, an isosceles of blood beneath it
dyeing the fabric of his shirt. The siren wailed louder.

His
last moments, his last desires, maybe: a phone call to a loved one,
one more sad conversation... one more Happy Meal.

The
story worked for one member of the group, but the purposefully steady
reveal of the location and situation made it very hard for most to
get into. The project and the site itself were generally well
received. Give it a shot!

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Poets and Writers is a non-profit organisation serving
writers, and their site offers a free online database of fiction and
poetry markets. If you're a writer looking to see your work in
literary magazines, it's possible that this website could be a
brilliant place to start...

But it
wasn't for me. I used to use Duotrope, a similar
literature resource, before they started charging a membership fee.
And using this site I got a string of written pieces accepted into a
range of literature magazines. (See the section on the right of this
site.)

Poets
and Writers offers a similar search tool to find magazines that are
looking for the type of story or poem you're looking to get
published. I used this site, as mentioned here, to send out a number of finished pieces
that have been sat on my hard drive waiting to be seen by publishers.
Here were a few initial pros and cons I found whilst using the site:

PRO

You can
filter your results to show magazines that accept simultaneous
submissions, and to cut out those that don't.

The same
goes for unsolicited submissions- i.e. you're a writer like me with
no agent.

The same
also goes for submission type: I only wanted magazines that would
accept electronic submissions- by email or through their own site.

You can
choose to filter out magazines that only accept a certain smaller
percentage of from a number of percentages of unsolicited submissions
published.

CON

You
cannot arrange results by most likely publications to accept work.

You
cannot filter out publications not accepting submissions.

You
cannot filter out publications that will not accept multiple
submissions.

You
cannot filter out publications that charge a reading fee.

The
biggest con, the most important let-down for me, was a big problem: I
didn't receive a single acceptance from any of the magazines I
approached. I made over 50 submissions. After sending out each piece
10 times, I made a note of the date and waited a month. I figured
that would give enough time for editors to make decisions.

That
month has passed, and I've so far received 9 rejections and no
acceptances. That's a fairly average ratio, although there are still
over 41 submissions unaccounted for. This is a problem with the
individual magazines more than anything, but this still doesn't
reflect well on the Poets and Writers site. I quickly started to
wonder whether I was doing anything wrong.

Have you
used this site? What kind of experience did you have? Comment
below...

Monday, 14 July 2014

A
recent prompt at Writers Connect was the combination of these two
activities. It was probably inspired by the fact that we juggle these
two during the sessions' warm-up exercise- most of us scour the
Wetherspoons menu when we first get in, and by the time we start the
exercise the staff are already serving us. Here's what I devised:

Rick
Tucker, food critic extraordinaire, sat with his notebook open at the
table.

“You
won't have had a meal quite like this,” said Brent.

Brent,
in his thirties, had wiped his hands on his apron, staining it
further on the day he opened his restaurant. “It's our South
American special. The ingredients aren't easy to come by.”

“Well,
said Rick. “I'll be sure to savour it.” He'd already broken a
sweat but he couldn't taste any spices. “Is this a vegetarian
dish?” he asked, wolfing a mouthful, his appetite ballooning
instantly.

“It
is,” Brent said. “Made from nothing but vegetation.”

Rick
scribbled with his pad at the side of his dish, his shorthand getting
more crippled with each word. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I need the
gents,” Rick said. “If your toilets are up to scratch, you'll get
a glowing review.” He began to feel strangely arrogant. “Glowing.”

The
urinals were pristine: Rick realised they had no drainage, no hole.
But he went anyway. It filled the urinal. After he'd finished, a
metal sheet slotted down over the receptacle, sealing it off. The
door slammed behind him.

“We
now have a sample of your coked up urine.” Brent stepped forward.
“About that review. Do I have your assurance it'll be as glowing as
you say?!”

Saturday, 12 July 2014

I think
it's safe to say that no matter what a man does to work out, if he's
got a 36-inch chest he's never going to turn into a unit of epic
proportions, is he?

I've
always had a slim build, and throughout my adult life I've been in
great physical shape and shit physical shape. It's usually come down
to diet, but it's also been down to padwork- Muay Thai and boxing.
I'm boxing at the moment but- now age is catching up with me- I'm not
finding it as easy as I used to to tone up. So after years of
smashing the weights and trying to lift 10 reps of the heaviest
weight I can, I'm going to spend the next month repping out.

This
will include:

10-minute
cross trainer

Bicep
chin-ups

Dips

Wide
grip chin-ups

I have a
PB on each of these- I'll see how much I can add to them in the
course of the next month. Hopefully, I'll tone up better than I have
been doing.

Friday, 11 July 2014

I wanted
to show the internet that there was a method of getting free
publicity for your website on a mass scale, a method that no-one was
talking about. Hence, I spent five months working on a self-devised
blogging project. I tried to get my blog shared over Twitter to boost
visibility and start conversations about social media.

Oh, one
more thing- the project involves hundreds of porn stars.

In
2012 I found an online directory of Twitter accounts for adult
entertainment performers called Porn Star Tweet. I spent a month using it to get my blog
retweeted. During that month, my daily page views surged. I wrote up
the project here.

Before
long, that particular post had become my most popular on the blog.
(It's been overtaken since by this very strange piece about a
depressed lovebird.)

I left
the Porn Star Tweet site alone for a year whilst I worked on other
projects, but I knew the site was a goldmine for garnering page
views, and that there were some interesting questions to ask about
the concept of porn stars being on Twitter and being available to
talk to. Eventually, I came back to Porn Star Tweet to approach the
remaining 800 accounts listed on the site.

Due to
faults with the Porn Star Tweet site it took 9 months to exhaust all
the accounts. During that time, though, my stats leaped from 166,837
to 206,813. Considering I set up the blog in 2008, that's a
big jump. I then wrote up the experiment as Ballooning Your Blog Stats With Porn Star Tweet: Take 2.

I wanted
to publicise this particular blog post to gauge a few reactions. A
month ago I tweeted to all the contributors to say thanks. A handful
retweeted the post, helping to rake in a few hits. I showed it to a
few social media people who I was following on Twitter, getting the
odd favourite here and there. All of the feedback I got was positive,
except for one of the porn girls. I'd tweeted to her so long ago that
when I showed her the post she had no idea what I was talking about.
“don't know who you are and I didn't help you with anything....new
spam.” Not entirely correct.

Finally
I trudged through my Twitter followings for social media-related
accounts, people or organisations that might be tweeting / blogging
about sites like Twitter. I fired a few tweets their way to see what
they thought about “Ballooning Take 2”, but I didn't hear much
back from them. The post in question has racked in around 1500 hits
so far and will enter the top 10 in the next few days. And overall, I've racked up a further 55,000 hits since uploading it. So the project can hardly be deemed a failure.

It's
strange that when I wrote up the first Porn Star Tweet project it
quickly got into the top 10 posts on my site, and received 27
comments. Yet the second attempt involved more people and received
less hits and no comments. But, whatever. I know it's a totally
mental idea, and it wasn't going to revolutionise the world of social
media.

Monday, 7 July 2014

So
recently Facebook admitted it “manipulated” its users in a social experiment. The social media site had been tweaking the news feeds of 689,000
users- some users were shown more positive statuses, others more
negative.

“The
bias did colour those individual users' own postings later on on
Facebook,” says Gareth Mitchell from
BBC's audio technology show, Click. Those dished up with positive
content were more likely to go on to post positive things themselves,
and then vice versa for those who had more negative information.”

Those
familiar with psychology- and some of the content on this blog- will
be no stranger to the concept that positivity begets positivity. That
having the right attitude can influence things in your favour, and
that it isn't just psycho-babble to make naïve people feel better.

Hold
that thought.

A few
years ago I was using a failing Macintosh G4 computer. I'd had it for
8 years and it was CONSTANTLY freezing on me, to the point where I
was borrowing my mum' laptop to get by. In the Mac's dying days, I
managed to post my frustration onto Facebook, berating the Apple
brand and my annoyance with the situation. I quickly forgot about
this post once I got running with the laptop.

Cue the
weekend. Ferro phones me from a pub out in Uppermill or somewhere,
letting me know they're all already out, and asking where I was.
They're all drunk already, and in the background I can hear them all
screeching like wild animals and chanting my name. That's when I hear
Hicks pipe up with “Macs are shit!” in some over-emphatic
northern accent.

I went
out to meet them, but that isn't the point. Hicks, Ferro- everyone in
that group, I realised- had noticed the negativity I was pumping out
on Facebook. So much so that, when they're pissed and think of me,
they think of the bitching and moaning I do on social media.

I can't
remember anything of the night (because it was years ago. I was
sober, so can't blame the alcohol). But I remember getting in at the
end of the night, thinking about my mates and our Facebook statuses.
Hicks and Ferro- and pretty much everyone in that group- are
generally positive people. Popular with men, popular with women,
always have a joke to crack and are never short of conversation. Their statuses were generally positive. I,
meanwhile, was depressed, broke, not doing well with women and didn't
really get on with that many people. On Facebook, I was showing it
without realising it.

Not long
after that, I got an add from a woman who lived local to me. We had a
handful of mutual friends, including Hicks and Ferro. She was
beautiful, and she'd talk to me a lot on Facebook chat. I may have
ploughed in too soon and we didn't meet up in the end. Maybe I asked
her for a drink too early, or, maybe it was something else.

I tried
really hard not to piss and moan in my statuses, but eventually I let
something slip- possibly about people not going out as much. She
asked me about it and I had to bluff my way around it and make it
sound like I wasn't that bothered about this thing holding me back-
whatever it was.

Since
then, though, we don't talk as much. And it's a real shame.

Since
these two moments occurred, I've made a concerted effort to make my
statuses positive based on this one principal: If the person of your
dreams were to add you on Facebook today, would they like what they
see? Are you showing your best side? Are you making it as easy as
possible for yourself to grasp opportunities when they arise? And are
your friends influencing you to be more positive? And finally, are
you- as you should be- influencing others to be more positive
yourself?

Tuesday, 1 July 2014

Here's
an odd-but-effective method of developing a creative writing piece.
Next time you're at your writer's group, warm up with this exercise:
Give each member two slips of paper. On the first, we write an
adjective. On the other, we write a noun. These are folded up and
placed into two respective piles.

Each
pile is shuffled separately and each member picks out one nounslip
and one verb slip. The title and subject for each person's vignette
is “The (adjective) (noun)”.

With 10
minutes on the clock, I produced this story. You might be surprised
by where it leads. (Geddit? “Leads”? Oh well.)

The
Round Dog

Bert's
dog wasn't like other dogs. Sure, he could take Dougal for walks, and
yeah, he'd bark once in a while, but Dougal was a difficult dog to
look after. Difficult to stroke, difficult to explain and very hard
to get over stiles on country walks. Dougal was round. I don't mean
rotund, like Bert had been feeding him too much- I mean round. He was
a circular dog. A tubular canine. A growth defect after being born in
an empty tank on the back of a diesel transporter.

When
Bert took Dougal for walks, he clipped the lead to the collar, a
leather strap fitperfectly to the circumference of the dog. Bert
would go for a stroll, Dougal for a roll. As they walked, the lead
would whip up and down like a lasoo.

Across
from Dougal, on a bright day, a border collie was chasing a frisbee,
leaping to catch it in his mouth.

Dougal
tugged at the lead and Bert untied him to let him roam.

Dougal,
confused by the collie's behaviour, rotated towards the dog and bit
the dog on the ankle. The dog went full-circle and bit the 360-degree
dog in return.

Hmm.
Yes. The last sentence was written after the alarm had sounded, hence
the clunkiness. Rebel!

Would You Like to Write for Power is a State of Mind?

Here at PIASOM I'm looking for guest bloggers to get involved. I want you to:1) Tell the world about the superb city of Greater Manchester. If know of something quirky, awesome, bizzare or important happening, why not get involved?2) Show me your ideas of producing great literature. Do you perform excercises at a writing group? Do you compete in poetry slams / rap battles? Are you setting up a magazine? Tell me and get your writing seen. More info:http://powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com/2011/03/would-you-like-to-write-for-power-is.html